Considerations for Managing Classic Approval Processes

Admin Permissions

Users with one of these permissions are considered approval admins.

• Modify All Records object-level permission for the given object
• Modify All Data user permission

Approval admins can:

• Approve or reject pending approval requests without being part of the classic approval process
• Edit records that have been locked for approval

Activating Approval Processes

• A classic approval process must have at least one step before you can activate it.
• Before you activate your classic approval process, test it in your Salesforce sandbox.
• After a classic approval process is activated, you can’t add, delete, or change the order of the steps or change its reject or skip behavior, even if the process is inactive.

Monitoring In-Flight Classic Approval Processes

Standard reports for approval requests are included in both the Administrative Reports folder and the Activity Reports folder.

Deploying over Existing Classic Approval Processes

When you deploy a classic approval process with no entry criteria to overwrite an existing classic approval process with entry criteria, then the entry criteria from the existing process are applied to the deployed process.

Deleting Classic Approval Processes

Before you delete a classic approval process:

• Make sure it’s inactive.
• Delete all approval requests that are associated with it, and remove them from the Recycle Bin.
• Delete all records, for example, accounts that were submitted through the approval process regardless of status. By deleting the records, the associated ProcessInstanceWorkitem and ProcessInstance records are also deleted automatically. 
• If you can't delete the classic approval process, try again after 2 days. Salesforce can take up to 2 days to delete the files that you removed from the recycle bin.